Word: wynton
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...standard songs featuring his father on piano, is a return to the very essence of jazz -- a melody with a beat. The forthcoming sound-track album for Tune in Tomorrow, set in the Crescent City, features sonorous Ellingtonian orchestrations with a spicy New Orleans accent. In addition to recording, Wynton plays some 120 live performances a year at venues ranging from cramped basement clubs like New York City's venerable Village Vanguard to the cavernous Hollywood Bowl to Lincoln Center, where since 1987 he has served as artistic director for the annual Classical Jazz festival...
Saxophonist-composer-bandleader Gerry Mulligan, 63, is particularly impressed by Wynton's developing skills as a composer and his "sensibilities as a bandleader." Those sensibilities were sorely tested in 1985, when Branford jumped ship to join Sting's rock group. That not only destroyed a band style based on the tight interplay between the two brothers, but also sparked press articles that turned the breakup into a bitter public row. The dust has settled, but relations remain cool between them. "He didn't kill nobody, you know," shrugs Wynton...
...aftermath of that derailment, which launched Branford on a highly successful career of his own, Wynton has assembled a group of young players (pianist Eric Reid, 20; drummer Herlin Riley, 33; trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, 23; saxophonists Todd Williams, 23, and Wes Anderson, 25) remarkable not only for their musicianship but also for their loyalty to his leadership. Says Anderson: "Wynton is someone who can guide us. He's one of the shepherds of this music...
Meanwhile, Wynton found a shepherd to help guide him back to the source: New Orleans clarinetist Michael White, 35. Unlike Marsalis -- unlike most blacks of his generation -- White took an interest in the city's old-time musicians, learned to play their style and eventually became a regular with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The two men started bumping into each other at airports and music festivals a few years ago and developed a close friendship...
...sparsely furnished living room of his Manhattan brownstone, with three Louis Armstrong statuettes peering down from the mantelpiece, he confidently mingles allusions to Picasso and the Iliad with appreciations of Duke Ellington and childhood anecdotes. The hardwood floor is littered with the toys of his two sons, Wynton Jr., 2, and Simeon, six months; their mother Candace Stanley, 28, is doing postgraduate work at New York University. (Marsalis has put the four-story house on the market for $950,000 and is planning to move his family to New Orleans...